1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for separating particles or components of a fluid. The invention has particular advantages in connection with separating blood components, such as white blood cells and platelets.
The flared elutriation chamber described herein may be used with various blood-separation apparatus, such as the apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,926, issued Mar. 3, 1998; U.S. Pat. No. 5,951,877, issued Sep. 14, 1999; U.S. Pat. No. 6,053,856, issued Apr. 25, 2000; U.S. Pat. No. 6,334,842, issued Jan. 1, 2002; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/884,877 filed Jul. 1, 2004; U.S. Pat. No. 7,201,848. The entire disclosure of each of these U.S. patents and patent applications is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many different fields, liquids carrying particle substances must be filtered or processed to obtain either a purified liquid or purified particle end product. In its broadest sense, a filter is any device capable of removing or separating particles from a substance. Thus, the term “filter” as used herein is not limited to a porous media material but includes many different types of devices and processes where particles are either separated from one another or from liquid.
In the medical field, it is often necessary to filter blood. Whole blood consists of various liquid components and particle components. The liquid portion of blood is largely made up of plasma, and the particle components include red blood cells (erythrocytes), white blood cells (leukocytes), and platelets (thrombocytes). While these constituents have similar densities, their average density relationship, in order of decreasing density, is as follows: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. In addition, the particle components are related according to size, in order of decreasing size, as follows: white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Most current purification devices rely on density and size differences or surface chemistry characteristics to separate and/or filter the blood components.
Typically, donated platelets are separated or harvested from other blood components using a centrifuge. White cells or other selected components may also be harvested. The centrifuge rotates a blood separation vessel to separate components within the vessel or reservoir using centrifugal force. In use, blood enters the separation vessel while it is rotating at a very rapid speed and centrifugal force stratifies the blood components, so that particular components may be separately removed. Components are removed through ports arranged within stratified layers of blood components.
White blood cells and platelets in plasma form a medium density stratified layer or “buffy coat”. Because typical centrifuge collection processes are unable to consistently and satisfactorily separate white blood cells from platelets in the buffy coat, other processes have been added to improve results. In one procedure, after centrifuging, platelets are passed through a porous woven or non-woven media filter, which may have a modified surface, to remove white blood cells. However, use of the porous filter introduces its own set of problems. Conventional porous filters may be inefficient because they may permanently remove or trap approximately 5-20% of the platelets. These conventional filters may also reduce “platelet viability” meaning that once passed through a filter a percentage of the platelets cease to function properly and may be partially or fully activated. In addition, porous filters may cause the release of bradykinin, an inflammation mediator and vasodialator, which may lead to hypotensive episodes in a patient. Porous filters are also expensive and often require additional time-consuming manual labor to perform a filtration process. Although porous filters are effective in removing a substantial number of white blood cells, activated platelets may clog the filter. Therefore, the use of at least some porous filters is not feasible in on-line processes.
Another separation process is one known as centrifugal elutriation. This process separates cells suspended in a liquid medium without the use of a membrane filter. In one common form of elutriation, a cell batch is introduced into a flow of liquid elutriation buffer. This liquid, which carries the cell batch in suspension, is then introduced into a funnel-shaped chamber located on a spinning centrifuge. As additional liquid buffer solution flows through the chamber, the liquid sweeps smaller, less dense, slower-sedimenting cells toward an elutriation boundary within the chamber, while larger, more dense, faster-sedimenting cells migrate to an area of the chamber having the greatest centrifugal force.
When the centrifugal force and force generated by the fluid flow are balanced, the fluid flow is increased to force slower-sedimenting cells from an exit port in the chamber, while faster-sedimenting cells are retained in the chamber. If fluid flow through the chamber is increased, progressively faster-sedimenting cells may be removed from the chamber. Depending on conditions such as flow rate or viscosity, for example, sedimentation rate will be dominated by either the size or density of the cells.
Thus, centrifugal processing separates particles having different sedimentation velocities. Stoke's law describes sedimentation velocity (VS) of a spherical particle as follows:VS=((D2cell*(ρcell−ρmedium))/(18*μmedium)*ω2r where D is the diameter of the cell or particle, ρcell is the density of the particle, ρmedium is the density of the liquid medium, μmedium is the viscosity of the medium, and ω is the angular velocity and r is the distance from the center of rotation to the cell or particle. Because the diameter of a particle is raised to the second power in Stoke's equation and the density of the particle is not, it is typically the size of a cell, rather than its density, that usually influences its sedimentation rate. This explains why larger particles generally remain in a chamber during centrifugal processing, while smaller particles are released, if the particles have similar densities.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,825,175 to Sartory, centrifugal elutriation has a number of limitations. In most of these processes, particles must be introduced within a flow of fluid medium in separate, discontinuous batches to allow for sufficient particle separation. Thus, some elutriation processes only permit separation in particle batches and require an additional fluid medium to transport particles. In addition, flow forces must be precisely balanced against centrifugal force to allow for proper particle segregation.
For these and other reasons, there is a need to improve particle separation and/or separation of components of a fluid.